News

A court has recognized the evidence collected by the Tver Region Office of the Investigative Committee sufficient to convict two residents of the town of Tver Andrei Shchurin and Boris Gavrilov. They were found guilty of crimes under Part 2, items “c” and “d” of Article 131, Part 2, item “b” of Article 131, Part 2, items “b” and “c” of Article 132, Part 2, item “b” of Article 132, Parts 3 and 4 of Article 30, Part 2, items “a”, “g” and “j” of Article 105, Part 2 of Article 105 of the RF Penal Code (rape, sexual abuse, attempted murder of two people, committed by a group of people aggravated by rape and sexual abuse, murder).

The court and investigators have revealed that on the night of 18 April 2003, the perpetrators met two young women on the bank of the Lazur river in Lidiya Bazanova Street in Tver and raped them. They tried to kill one of the women, but failed as they thought that she already was dead. They then strangled the other girl and dumped the body in the Lazur river. They fled from the scene, but left behind a beer can with handprint of one of them, which were later processed and put into the system.

It was impossible to identify and locate the criminals for a long time as the circumstances surrounding the crime were not clear and without direct evidence it was impossible to prosecute the criminals right away. But investigative and search operations never stopped. 12 years later one of the men got to the police for an administrative offence, and that was where his prints turned up. It was immediately transferred to experienced investigators of the regional investigative authority who then solved the crime.

On 17 February 2015, one of the men located by agents of the Crime Detection Unit of the Interior Ministry’s Tver Region Office was immediately transported to the regional investigative authority where his involvement in the crime was confirmed by well-planned questioning tactics. He was arrested and the other man was arrested on 18 February 2015. The survivor recognized both of them.

At the same time, considering that the crime had been committed a long time ago, it was particularly hard to investigate it as a lot of forensic inquiries, investigative, search and procedural operations were necessary. To find the truth the investigators ran a number of complex inquiries, including dactylographic, psychiatric, medical, phonographic and linguistic ones. The two men were placed in custody pending trial.

It should be mentioned that the Tver Region Office of the Investigative Committee has effectively worked for many years to analyze and solve crimes committed in previous years. This work is done by a team of qualified investigators, operative agents and veterans of investigative bodies. This way, in 11 months of 2016, the team solved 58 crimes committed in previous years (against 39 in the same period the year before). One of the most recent examples of their work is the abovementioned crime.

The court has sentenced Shchurin to 20 years in a maximum-security correctional facility and Gavrilov to 18 years in a maximum-security correctional facility.